Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Weekly Math Fact: Prime Numbers

The longest prime number has been discovered and it's 17,425,170 digits long, surpassing the prior number discovered in 2008 which was a measly 12,978,189 digits long.

Discovered by University of Central Missouri mathematician Curtis Cooper, the number is 2 raised to the 57,885,161 power minus 1, NBC reports.  A prime number is by definition a natural number greater than 1 that has no positive divisors other than 1 and itself.

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